Since I don’t have a car, I spent much of yesterday either riding on or waiting for buses to get to a phone repair shop. Which I finally did, and as the proprietor was testing the battery,  which was fine, the phone came back to life. So now the phone is working again, no charge for the fix, but what an exhausting hassle. And Mercury is not in retrograde; I checked.

Okay, so where was I? Much of the news over the past few days has been about Trump’s falling poll numbers. He’s not just historically unpopular; with the exception of “border security” his “policies” are underwater as well. The majority do not like his handling of the economy, or of immigrants, or anything else. Yet  he’s not getting the message. Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump is doubling down rather than backing off.

Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.

Josh Marshall writes that Trump has already lost.

I see the signs all around. He’s doubling down on things people don’t like. He’s fomenting a growing political backlash. The more signs we see of the limits of Trump’s power, the more people show signs of bucking that power. All power is unitary. We see signs of it everywhere. You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.

They are now reacting to initial resistance by doubling down on things that are not popular. They appear to be upset that they’ve managed to have fewer deportations during Trump’s first hundred days in office than Biden had in his last hundred. Now they’re going to crack down on local officials and are threatening more indictments of judges and other officials who get in their way.

Good luck getting 12 jurors to convict any of these people. 

Nobody is saying that the administration is going to collapse soon. It’s going to be a couple of months before the effects of the tariffs hit the retail stores, and consumers.

We still don’t know what’s going to happen to Medicaid. The last I heard, the Republicans in the House were considering ending the federal subsidy (which covers about 90 percent of the cost) and telling the states they can keep Medicaid if they can fund it themselves. It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these people that it’s the Red states that will cancel it immediately. But these often are the states, especially the rural ones, that need Medicaid the most, to keep hospitals open and their larger percentages of poor people from losing all access to medical care.  Cutting Medicaid will be economically devastating to large (and very Red) parts of the country. Are Republican politicians collectively trying to shoot themselves in the foot?

The House also is talking about work requirements for receiving Medicaid. This has been done in some states; it usually just adds a lot of administrative cost and hassle and doesn’t save the state any money. I’m not sure what percentage of Medicaid recipients are either seniors or children, but it’s probably a lot.

Not surprisingly the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed Joe Biden.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform after the economic news dropped, and markets braced to open lower.

“I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.

“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

But most economists are telling us there is no way the economy will get better as long as Trump refuses to completely change course. It’s probably not too late to salvage a decent economy out of the mess, but Trump is unlikely to let that happen.

So there we are.

Worth reading: Jamelle Bouie, The New Deal Is a Stinging Rebuke to Trump and Trumpism.